Social History
Social History• September 2, 2019

Resort Life: Chapter XXX, May 1966 – September 1966

The Ritz, The Rolls & Rendezvous on the Rocks: Re-visiting Ellen Glendinning’s fabulous photo album from a Labor Day Weekend in Northeast Harbor 53 years ago in 1966...

READ MORE
Read more

THE OLD FALL RIVER LINE: NIGHT BOATS FROM NEW YORK TO BOSTON

Social History• August 30, 2019.
Leaving New York for a holiday, or business, for nearly a century it was the old Fall River Line, night boats from New York to Boston could make you wish for the ticket and the ride especially today. A trip and reported by Michael Grace taking us down history’s memory lane... READ MORE
Read more

Mrs. Post’s Mar-a-Lago

Social History• August 28, 2019.
A look back on the creation of Mar-a-Lago by Marjorie Meriweather Post Hutton, the biggest, most fantastic house in Palm Beach built in the heyday of the Roaring Twenties, now the property of the President of the United States, as its owner intended... READ MORE
Read more

Palm Beach Social History: High Rollers: Gambling on Palm Beach

Social History• April 12, 2019.
We re-visit Augustus Mayhew’s High Rollers: Gambling on Palm Beach — a wondrous, fascinating history of another time and another world... READ MORE
Read more

Philadelphia in Palm Beach, Part I

Social History• April 5, 2019.
We are taking today off to continue to optimize the back end of the new site. In the meantime, please enjoy Part 1 of Augustus Mayhew’s series on Philadelphian Ellen Glendinning (first published on these pages in 2011), who kept an extensive diary where she recorded and photographed the life around her family and friends; a chronological scrapboo... READ MORE
Read more

The Gilded Cage: Tragedy at Palm Beach

Social History• September 27, 2018.
“Men who club women and drag them by their hair,” were simply “clumsy, old-fashioned and unchic,” declared society referee Igor Cassini in his August 1949 syndicated column Cavemen in the Blue Book. Reflecting on the post-WW II era’s tolerance for domestic assault, the article’s perspective on “slaphappy lovebirds” and “the little... READ MORE
Read more

The Coconuts! A Palm Beach Party History: 1920-2018

Social History• May 23, 2018.
“There is to be a Tropical Ball given by a group of young men styling themselves The Cocoanuts at the Country Club tonight …” — The Palm Beach Post, February 18, 1920, page seven. On December 31, 1991 at The Breakers Golf Club several Coconuts offered conflicting timelines when a local reporter asked them to […]... READ MORE
Read more

Higher Ground: Tall Timbers revives Livingstons’ Florida plantation

Social History• April 27, 2018.
In 1958 prominent New York architect-turned-naturalist Henry L. Beadel repurposed his 2,400-acre Tall Timbers hunting plantation into an ecological preserve to conduct conservation studies on the estate’s vegetation and wildlife. Sixty years later, Tall Timbers Research Station & Land Conservancy is Florida and Georgia’s largest regional la... READ MORE
Read more

Palm Beach Social History: Casa Apava: Architectural Flashback

Social History• December 18, 2017.
With past and present presidential links garnering much of the Palm Beach limelight, it may be fitting to recount the work of the youngest son of President James Garfield, architect Abram Garfield, who designed Casa Apava. Although today it is best known for its Billionaire’s Row location, impressive measurements and astronomical price, the seclu... READ MORE
Read more

Romanesque Revival: Addison Mizner’s Riverside Baptist Church

Social History• November 1, 2017.
Addison Mizner’s influential style continues to shape Palm Beach and Boca Raton’s architectural ambiance. And yet, what some consider Mizner’s magnum opus, his only religious building, remains far-removed from this protective limelight. One of 16 churches and more than 2,000 contributing buildings comprising Jacksonville’s Riverside Histori... READ MORE
Read more

Nikola Tesla: A SoHo story

Social History• September 22, 2017.
Now here’s a different sort of SoHo story. Tesla. Not the car company. Not the heavy metal band. The inventor Nikola Tesla. Back in the 1880’s and ‘90s when SoHo was descending from its prosperous heights, a young man from a village in Croatia, in his mid-20s, had three laboratories located in the SoHo: one […]... READ MORE
Read more

JOHN RINGLING NORTH – CIRCUS KING

Social History• July 18, 2017.
John Ringling North was a combination of Circus King, showmanship, brassy flamboyance, huckster salesman and perennial Playboy, and was a good enough show to compete with the acts and spectacles he produced under the Big Top for the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey combined shows. Against all the odds, he brought the family circus into […]... READ MORE
Read more

Palm Beach Social Diary: Uncommon Lives

Social History• March 30, 2017.
Uncommon Lives: David & Gertrude! Emily! Charles! Gertie! George & LaLa! Palm Beach’s seasonal social cha-cha-cha may be drawing to a close but apparently islanders will still need to adjust their calendar and logistics for the comings-and-goings of POTUS45, especially those living within the perimeter termed “the zone.” L... READ MORE

FOLLOW US